Train passengers say they were left stranded for hours in the freezing cold after major disruptions to train services between London and Cambridge.

Great Northern has said a train had hit an obstruction on the line near to Royston and a fault with the signalling system at Littleport were to blame for the disruption last night (December 15).

One passenger claims around 300 people were left stuck at King's Cross station in London after all trains to Cambridge, Ely, Kings Lynn and others were delayed for more than 60 minutes.

Hundreds more managed to get as far as Letchworth, Hertfordshire by train, but were left out in the cold waiting for a replacement bus service for hours, leading police to hand out blankets to children to keep them warm in the freezing temperatures.

She said: "I was one of about 300 people who were stranded at Kings Cross today when all trains to Cambridge were cancelled (technically 'delayed' but [they] didn't run from about 5pm today until at least 8pm when I left).

"We were told at King's Cross by National Rail staff to go to Letchworth where there were rail replacement buses. When we eventually got there, there were no buses.

"A member of staff from the station was trying to put people in taxis which was a nightmare because they were driving people the 40 minute journey to Cambridge before returning so it was taking ages. Someone told me they'd been there for 3 hours waiting for transport.

Some people got taxis and mini-buses to drive them the 40 minutes back to Cambridge (Image: Hazel Lawrence)

"The police were there (about 8-10 I think) trying to help with crowd control, and they were handing out blankets to children and [to] keep fragile people safe. When I checked BBC weather it said 5 degrees. But felt closer to zero.

"Eventually buses arrived but only one by one and there were mad scrambles to get on them. I'm on a double decker right now on the way to Cambridge."

Hazel reached King's Cross at 5pm to catch her train home, and was still stranded when we spoke to her at 10.45pm last night.

She said she was sitting on the train back to Cambridge for 40 minutes when a fight broke out, and some people had to be removed from the train, only adding to an already stressful journey.

When buses did arrive there was a mad scramble for them (Image: Hazel Lawrence)

“I was also sat on a train for 40 minutes at King's Cross waiting for it to leave and a fight broke out in the carriage and people were removed from the train. Not technically part of the cold Letchworth experience but still the same stressful journey."

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Greg Gormley said: " Your contingency plans are utterly useless. People kettled for an hour so far at Letchworth."

On its website, a spokesman for Greater Northern said: "We would like to apologise for the severe disruption experienced by Great Northern passengers on 15 December. Just before 1630 on Saturday we received reports of a signalling issue between Littleport and Downham Market on the Cambridge – King’s Lynn line. This was confirmed as a double track circuit failure, and as a result we had a train trapped at Littleport.

Shortly after this we received information that the 1547 Ely to London King’s Cross service had struck a tree in the Royston area, causing both lines to become blocked. Unfortunately given the bad weather in the area the tree become wrapped around the overhead lines and attached to the train. These two incidents meant that we were unable to run a service between Letchworth Garden City and Kings Lynn.

Following this news we immediately begun to source buses to be put into place, however due to reasons beyond our control there were very limited numbers of buses available, but we continued to work on this for the rest of the night.

Network Rail were, at the same time, also dealing with a number of large scale incidents on other areas of their network.

"We would like to apologise for the problems many of our passengers experienced yesterday due to these two incidents. We do appreciate the problems this disruption has caused, and will be working with our partners at Network Rail to understand how we can improve our response to similar incidents in future.

"If your journey was delayed 15 minutes or more as a result of this you may be able to claim compensation under our delay repay scheme, and you can find details of this here."

Great Northern has been contacted for further comment.

Were you affected by Saturday night's rail chaos? Let us know in the comments